Features —

Total share: 30 years of personal computer market share figures

It's been a long, strange trip for the personal computer over 30 years. Ars …

The Mac stands alone (1994-2001)

The release of Windows 95 in August 1995 was a huge media event, unprecedented in personal computer history. People lined up around the block at midnight to be one of the first to receive the new software, and Tonight Show host Jay Leno emceed the launch party, with "Start Me Up" by the Rolling Stones playing as the official theme song of the event.

Many Macintosh, Amiga and OS/2 users wondered what all the fuss was about. Windows 95 contained many "new" features, like long filenames and preemptive multitasking, which had been a part of these operating systems since their inception (with the exception of Mac OS, which did not have preemptive multitasking). However, Windows 95 brought all these features to the mainstream, and third-party software developers flocked to it. Strong developer support by Microsoft and an eagerness by OEMs to bundle it with their machines ensured its success. Meanwhile, sales of OS/2 fell off the ends of the earth and IBM eventually stopped updating it in 2001.

PC sales shot up, and Macintosh sales slumped. By 1998, PCs were closing in on sales rates of 100 million units per year, while Macintosh sales fell from 4.5 million in 1995 to just 2.7 million in 1998. Many industry analysts started to predict that the Macintosh was doomed, and that Apple was set to follow Commodore into oblivion. However, Apple was able to float a junk bond in 1997 that kept them financially above water, despite losing over US$700 million in 2Q 1996 and again in 2Q 1997.

Bill Gates and Jay Leno share jokes about things that are Micro and Soft

Apple was at loose ends trying to complete a major update to their operating system, called Copland. Eventually Copland was cancelled, and Apple had to go shopping for a new operating system, one that could support preemptive multitasking and memory protection. Originally Apple had decided to purchase BeOS, which had been started on its own custom hardware then ported to PPC and x86 computers by ex-Apple employee Jean-Louis Gassee. But the flamboyant CEO of Be, Inc. held out for too much money and ultimately overplayed his hand. Steve Jobs jumped at his chance, and sold NeXT, Inc. outright to Apple for US$400 million in December 1996.

The new strategy for Apple was to have two operating systems, one based on NeXTSTEP and aimed at high-end users, and the other based on the now-creaky Classic Mac OS with bits of Copland's corpse bolted on. The latter OS shipped as Mac OS 8, and proved popular with Macintosh users. The former, now called Rhapsody, shipped only in Developer Preview releases, which confused developers completely. What should they develop for, Mac OS or Rhapsody? The two OSes had completely different APIs and programs from one could not work on another. This confusion, combined with more staggering financial losses in 1997, allowed Steve Jobs to stage a coup d'etat, seizing control of the company from the flailing Gil Amelio in July of 1997. Jobs placed most of his former NeXT engineers in charge of the operating system division, with their job no longer to enhance the Classic Mac OS, but to replace it completely.

This was to become Mac OS X, which added a subset of the Classic Mac OS API, called "Carbon," to the existing NeXTSTEP/Rhapsody API, which was now called "Cocoa." With the gradual phasing out of Classic Mac OS and its replacement by Mac OS X, Steve Jobs achieved two of his greatest goals: saving the Macintosh and replacing it with the NeXT Big Thing, all at the same time. The release of the colorful "gumdrop" iMac computer in 1998 revived Apple's fortunes, and with Mac OS X on the horizon, the Macintosh enjoyed a bump in sales to 3.8 million units in both 1999 and 2000.